Spirit of the Nin
by Dark-Lord-Winston
Summary: Follows two ordinary girls on an extraordinary adventure through a land that is not their home on a journey they never expected to discover a way to get home and their own Ninja Souls.


_Genre: Action/Adventure, Romance, Drama and Humor. ___

_Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. I don't make money by writing fan fiction. Don't sue me, I have no money. ___

_Pairings: Shikamaru/Temari, Neji/OC and Kiba/OC. ___

_There will be other pairings to come as I dream them up. ___

_Other: Flame me and die bakas. ___

_Rating: PG-13. Rated for mild swearing, violence, and sexual innuendo. Nothing graphic, mostly groping, peeking and people being abused with frying pans. Enjoy. __  
_

Ayame Kodomachi was without a doubt the most beautiful and popular girl at Ichiwar High School. She was tall and shapely, with luscious chocolate brown eyes, radiant golden skin and a fall of shimmering chestnut hair that fell to her waist. She got perfect marks in school, has a complete absence of tan-lines when wearing a bikini and was the subject of every cute, desirable boy's fantasy (though she would never acknowledge any of them with more then a polite smile.) 

Seeing her standing in her pleated mini skirt (which she looks fantastic in because she has perfect legs) by the lockers, observing her latest ninety-four percent test score one would think she is our heroine. But no. Look past her, that's right to the short haired girl being crammed in her locker. Yes. That's her.

"Isn't it convenient that people are having travel-sized kids these days?" The girls' soccer team laughed as they slammed the door shut after her. They laughed some more, clicked the lock shut before kicking the door and walking away, talking amongst themselves. 

Inside the locker Chiaki Kajiwara sighed. She was the definition of average, got average grades, of average weight, and has an average family. She's the kind of girl that never stands out in a crowd because she's not particularly good at anything, but not really very bad at anything either. She had short brown hair, brown eyes and has yet to breach the five foot mark. She hasn't played on a sports team since the Pee-Wee leagues where the coaches rolled dice to see who got her. And she always went to the loser, who sometimes cried. She's fifteen, takes the train to school and her leg is cramping because short as she is the locker is still too small for her.

This day has become a pattern for her. So she counts the minutes on her glow in the dark wrist-watch.

"Chiaki?" A voice asked expectantly.

"Hey Akane." She called through the ventilation slits in her locker door. "What's up?"

Akane Shouiriki sighed and put one hand on her hip as she started fiddling with the combination lock. She's not quite as average as Chiaki. She isn't small enough to fit in a locker anymore. 

"What's you're combo?" Akane asked shaking her head. "I've forgotten it again."

"Thirteen… five… twenty-two…"

A minute later the door swung open and toppled the small girl onto the floor in an avalanche of textbooks and crumpled paper as her cramping leg gave out. She picked herself up, dusted off her dark pants uniform and fixed her tie before smiling.

Chiaki comes up to about Akane's shoulder. By comparison Akane is pretty. She has golden skin, short wavy brown hair and olive green eyes set into a heart shaped face with a prominent nose and wide mouth. The two have lived next door to each other since before they could toddle.

"Are you just going to take this for the rest of your life?" Akane asked, bending over and picking up Chiaki's textbook. She handed it over and Chiaki shrugged, shoving the book into the locker and kicking some of the papers back in before shouldering it closed and swinging her bag over her shoulder.

"Well the way I see it, in ten years I'll have lived my average life, have a fat husband and an average job. On the plus side I can assure myself that however pathetic my life is, my tax dollars will be paying for their prison cell." Chiaki replied shrugging off the question. The last time she'd tried to fight back she'd ended up upside down in the locker and had thus resigned herself, hoping that this way she would remain right side up.

The pair head over to the train station, graffiti splashed platforms choked with people and a few vandalized pay phones, the clientele ranging in status from bums to business men. They caught the Twenty-Seven and crowded into a narrow car train with what seemed like a million other people. The train pulled away from the platform, slowly picking up speed until it ran at about two hundred miles per hour, the scenery out of the scratched windows nothing more then flashing, indecipherable shapes of shifting grey.

Chiaki found herself squished against the wall, gripping one of the metal handholds for dear life as the crowd jostled and pressed in. Akane spotted someone from her history class and wandered over to chat leaving Chiaki to contemplate the two or three hours of homework she had waiting for her and trying to remember if her algebra tutor was on Tuesday or Thursday. She never even saw it coming.

The crash sounded like thunder, a great boom of grating metal and the force of it lifting into the air then crashing back onto the tracks practically threw the passengers into the air before slamming them down again. Chiaki pulled herself up and looked around, Akane was stuck under her friend from history class but other then that looked okay. Some of the passengers had fallen down, others managed to remain standing but all of them looked white faced and confused.

The next shuddering crash knocked those who managed to keep their feet flying. Chiaki felt herself fly against a window, momentum cracking the glass, a webbing of fine cracks branching out from the place her shoulder had connected on the glass. The tube lighting that ran along the ceiling flickered, then faded to a dull glow, went out. Panic ensued.

Chiaki stumbled to her feet, gripping her shoulder, now numb from pain to be bowled over almost immediately by the herd of people fighting to get out. She hit the floor and a foot slammed down not an inch away from her face, another by her fingers and a foot landed in her soft, unprotected stomach. Winded Chiaki tried to hoist herself back onto her feet only to be knocked down as the train shuddered again. People screamed, pushed, stomped, her ears are rung and by the time Akane pulled her to her feet they were the last ones in the car. 

"Come on Chiaki! They're evacuating the train!" Chiaki glanced out the window and it becomes suddenly and violently clear what had happened. The nose end of the train was hanging off the bridge over the river, broken pieces of metal and wire curling in every direction, sparks exploding. With a groan of protesting metal the train slipped forward.

"Oh hell…" Chiaki muttered as with another shudder the train slipped farther over the turbulent black water. She heard the screams of rending metal and exploding glass mingle with those of the evacuated passengers as the train moved again, yanking their feet out from under them.

"I wish I was back in that locker." She thought for one hysterical moment as the train slipped forward and, screaming, the two plunged after it into the chilling, watery depths of the bay.

_Prologue done! Now we can get to the good parts, I'll power through the first couple chapters, get everything set up and then get to the good stuff. Enjoy!! ._


End file.
